culture wars

Earlier this month, PFAW held a panel discussion in New York to discuss the censorship of the Smithsonian’s Hide/Seek exhibit. PFAW founder Norman Lear, art critic Blake Gopnik, artist AA Bronson, PFAW president Michael Keegan, art museum director Dennis Barrie and journalist Katrina vanden Heuvel discussed the Smithsonian scandal and the return of the Right’s “culture wars.” You can watch videos of the discussion here:

We should have known what was coming in January when the House GOP, in one of its first acts in the majority, took away the limited floor voting rights of the District of Columbia’s one delegate in Congress. The move was depressingly ironic coming from a party that had swept to power on a movement that claimed to echo the spirit of the American Revolution and its call for “no taxation without representation.” But the irony was lost on most of the GOP, and, it seems, hasn’t been found yet.

Today, the House will vote on whether to spend $100 million of federal tax dollars over five years to impose a school voucher program in the District that doesn’t work and that the local government doesn’t even want. The voucher program, which funnels federal money to religious schools, is a pet project of House Speaker John Boehner, who has shown no qualms about cutting other education programs—including Head Start and Title I grants for low-income school districts.

A similar program was eliminated in 2009 after it was found to be ineffective in increasing student achievement, and DC’s mayor and non-voting congressional delegate bothoppose reinstating it.

The voucher bill, expected to pass in the House, is the latest in a string of House GOP efforts to use DC as a pawn in the culture wars. The GOP’s radical anti-choice bill, HR 3, includes a provision that would prevent DC from using its own, locally raised tax dollars to provide abortion services. And now, Rep. Jim Jordan, leader of the 176-member Republican Study Group, is pushing for a bill that would overturn the District’s law allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry.

Just to be clear, an elected body in which DC residents have no voting representation has decided to spend its time imposing programs the city doesn’t want, overturning its laws, and deciding how it can spend its own local tax dollars. Somebody call the Tea Party – I bet they’ll be furious.

In the Huffington Post today, People For President Michael Keegan looks at the battle over censorship at the Smithsonian and what it means for the coming right-wing culture wars. The fight over the Smithsonian, he writes, is “just the beginning”:

As the newly empowered House GOP gears up to start culture wars on issues from reproductive rights for women to religious freedom for American Muslims, there's an important lesson to be learned from what happened this winter at the Smithsonian. Institutions and individuals will continue to come under attack from the right's powerful extremist-to-media-to-politician echo chamber. But, as the Smithsonian's experience showed once again, there is little to be gained by caving in to this loud and usually dishonest bullying. Clough's attempt at compromise -- instantly removing a work of art from an important exhibit -- only drew louder threats to censor the exhibit as a whole, while causing some of the Smithsonian's strongest supporters to lose trust in the institution. Despite what most might hope, the right is not going to stop its culture war campaigns anytime soon. The only thing the rest of us can do is aggressively tell the truth, unapologetically stand on principle, and refuse to back down.

Earlier this week, protesters—including representatives from People For— gathered on the National Mall to protest the censorship and call for Clough’s resignation. Campus Progress recorded the event, including an interview with protest participant Dan Choi, who was one of the most influential voices in the fight to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: